As of this writing, a tweet by disgraced Broadway fraud convict Roland Scahill has 90 thousand shares and 362 thousand likes, which if you're not used to Twitter is a ridiculously high amount that nobody generally hits. The tweet features nothing but four seconds of video footage from the John McCain funeral, and the caption "George W. Bush sneaking a piece of candy to Michelle Obama is warming my heart."
That's it. That's all it took to win Twitter for the day. Those four seconds of footage have been circulated around TV news stations to 'ooh's and 'ahh's of fawning establishment pundits yammering incessantly about how the death of War Hero John McCain™ has let everyone Put Aside Our Political Differences™ and Come Together As Americans™ to celebrate the life of a man who dedicated his entire political career to sowing death, suffering and devastation at every opportunity. A war criminal giving a piece of candy to the wife of another war criminal at the funeral of a war criminal is all it took to get mainstream American brains gushing with dopamine and oxytocin.
Because that's how compartmentalized Americans are from the reality of what war is and what it means. The explosions, the screams, the charred and shredded human bodies, the chaos and displacement and all the suffering, terrorism, slavery and rape that necessarily always comes with it, the million Iraqis killed under Bush, the unfathomable humanitarian disasters created in Libya and Syria under Obama, all the devastation created in all the military interventions McCain helped push for, all of that is so peripheral and distant in American consciousness that it can be dismissed with a wave of the hand and a piece of fucking candy.
And it isn't really their fault. The more woke Americans who've grown to resent their brainwashed countrymen hate it when I say this, but it isn't. It's not a coincidence that the nation with the most powerful military in the history of civilization and the most billionaires in the history of civilization also happens to have the most sophisticated propaganda system in the history of civilization, and that propaganda system is pointed at them from a very early age to normalize the war machine that is used to protect the empire of the billionaires.
The United States is the most important player in the imperial alliance centralized around it, and therefore its citizenry are necessarily the most propagandized people on earth. You can't have the populace of such an important nation suddenly demanding that troops be brought home and the resources being spent on bombs be spent eliminating the economic inequality on which your empire depends instead, so you've got to get into their minds early and aggressively to manipulate the way they think about war. Everything from flag worship to the fetishization of military personnel to Pentagon-controlled Hollywood movies are used from early childhood to install the assumption that their nation's bloated military budget is only ever going toward good and never evil, and to prime their minds for the war propaganda they will be fed by the plutocrat-owned news media.
Day after day after day after day, from when they are small until their dying breath, the American psyche is pummeled with this relentless assault upon its natural sense of empathy and reason. So it's understandable that every now and then one of them snaps and shoots up a building full of people, inflicting the same kind of mass murder at home they've been trained to accept as normal abroad. And it's understandable that they'd be duped into thinking the monstrous evils that have been inflicted upon our world by Bush, Obama and McCain (and Henry Kissinger, who also made an appearance at the funeral) are innocent little oopsie-poopsies which pale in comparison to something so monumentally heroic as correcting a woman who called Obama an Arab once, or sharing a piece of candy.
But if Americans are ever going to escape from the chains of oligarchy, they're necessarily going to have to cease consenting to imperialism. Without their resources being funneled into hundreds of bases and countless military and intelligence operations overseas, there'd be a chance to fix America's infrastructure and make sure everyone gets what they need. Without the US economy being propped up with the barrel of a gun to ensure the success of globalist agendas, Americans would have a chance to create a real economy based on real things that they themselves own and control. Without the ability to use the US war machine to advance their agendas, the oligarchs who control America's economy, government and media will be unable to rule over the increasingly wealthy and powerful masses. Without the best technology and the brainpower of the brightest Americans being sucked up into the war machine, the nation's most creative minds will lose their incentive to point their ingenuity at death and destruction, and can point it at useful innovations instead.
And then the propaganda machine which holds the whole empire together will be useless and impotent, and the shackles on American minds will crumble. And the rest of the empire will follow.
The first step in this direction is to cease normalizing the monsters who facilitate human butchery around the world. Stop believing they need to be regarded as "heroes" just because they wore a uniform at some point. Stop believing that it's ever okay to push for needless wars which butcher innocent men, women and children. Stop believing a man can facilitate the slaughter of a million people and not have that clearly be his single defining legacy. Stop believing that it's worse to criticize a warmonger than it is to be a warmonger.
Because if it's up to the bastards who rule us currently, they'll happily keep shushing us into polite silence while continuing to march us along our current ecocidal, omnicidal trajectory until it gets us all killed. They'll make saints of warmongering empire loyalists and uphold their murderous lives as exemplary and virtuous, and if we say we want to move things in a different direction we'll be shouted down with buzzwords about heroism and decency until we shut up. If we leave it up to these pricks, we'll become the first species to go extinct due to politeness.
Stop letting them normalize and elevate people who embody the very essence of the imperial oppression machine. Stop letting them humanize psychopathic war whores. Stop letting them twist this into a conversation about respecting those with different political opinions and make it about what it is: the mass murder of innocents for power and profit. Refuse to be reprimanded into polite silence. Refuse to die of politeness. Seize control of the narrative and force sanity into our imperiled world.
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Thank you Caitlin Johnstone for another refreshingly direct and accurate article. The way you relate the small courtesies of Bush, Obama & McCain to their murders of so many people makes the media propaganda look as silly and evil as it is.
Yea, the war criminals saluting war criminals from the other party for a week is good and if you don't think so you're the asshole... That's some sophisticated shit, right there.
They all deserve to be in the Hague and we're deifying them to "resist" Drumpf. Sad.
Status quo = Power, profit, and control.
Good = Respecting and protecting innocent life.
Evil = Hurting, oppressing, or killing, for fun or for profit.
Those in power don't respect and protect innocent life, they hurt, oppress, or kill for fun or for profit while maintaining and expanding the status quo of power, profit, and control.
I wish everyone would wake up already! What will it take? Oh, how long must we wait? Caitlin, don't you think it's time to go operational. Perhaps it's time to start talking about a global protest against war?
Satanic Freemason war profiteers rig all elections and sell the wars via the mainstream media. Heres proof masons worship SATAN!!!
Great article - straight honest truth about politicians & governments' war crimes for profit for the 1% & depopulation for the rest of the world - crimes against humanity should be called out for being such & said persons should be held judicially responsible in a court of law.
Having said that - I am fed-up with the silence from independent journalists who especially support Wikileaks & are also aware of not only the almost 10,000 docs published by Wikileaks of directed energy weapons https://search.wikileaks.org/?q=directed+energy+weapons but are also aware that Intel/police/govs & Bush & Obama administration know about & used the law to allow more surveillance abuse legal & illegal on knowingly innocent targets some of whom are subjected & put into organized harassment/stalking/torture programmes which include the use of directed energy weapons (EMF/microwaves/sonic/scalar etc/neuroweaponry/V2K/biorobotisation/mindreading/mindcontrol/synthetic telepathy/non-consensual microchipping & more via community policing/private contractors/corrupted Drs & hospitals/neighbourhood watch/Infragard/paid civilians in community including neighbours & children of all ages.
Domestic terrorism via voyeuristic torture & organized mobbing/harassment/stalking of innocent targets for profit is happening in USA/Canada/UK/Europe/5EyeCountries. Anyone can become an innocent victim of these crimes which are a cancer to the hearts' of our communities creating a Hunger Games type existence for civilians to profit from committing zersetzung on their neighbour/work colleague/relative/friend/lover/stranger etc.
Please join this brave tortured journalist in revealing domestic war crimes committed with military stealth weaponry on targeted innocents in the Western world to stop whistle blowers, activists, decent everyday people of integrity & compassion speak their truth & lead healthy & loving lives with their loved ones & communities.
Some links to Ramola D's important investigative journalism:
fbi whistle blower Geral Sosbee how they illegally surveil innocent targets & illegally persecute them via corrupt judicial system: https://everydayconcerned.net/2018/06/12/geral-sosbee-fbi-whistleblower-murderous-corruption-of-fbi-and-federal-magistrate-judges-sample-secret-fmj-court-order-requiring-inhumane-community-persecution-of-innocent-targets/
nsa whistle blower Karen Melton-Stewart on vexatious assaults by directed energy weapons & police using the Baker Act for reporting them: https://everydayconcerned.net/2016/08/05/nsa-whistleblower-wrongfully-baker-acted-by-florida-sheriffs-department-after-providing-hard-evidence-of-covert-electronic-harassment/
Open memo to President Trump: https://everydayconcerned.net/2017/01/26/memorandum-to-president-donald-j-trump-on-domestic-us-torture-programs-running-under-cover-of-surveillance/
Neighbours & neighbouring property always involved in the illegal harassment/stalking/torture of targeted innocents: https://everydayconcerned.net/2018/02/07/deep-state-treason-nsa-whistleblower-karen-stewart-reveals-massive-surveillance-abuse-of-innocent-americans-civilians-worldwide-beyond-fisa-memo-biggerthanreleasethememo/
Flyers to share: https://everydayconcerned.net/ti-station/flyers-for-public-education/?wref=tp
Share with your local police in USA: https://everydayconcerned.net/2016/08/05/nsa-whistleblower-wrongfully-baker-acted-by-florida-sheriffs-department-after-providing-hard-evidence-of-covert-electronic-harassment/
Suzie Dawson predicts this will be the year directed energy weapons gets exposed & asks who will be brave enough to report on it: https://everydayconcerned.net/2018/04/21/breakthrough-in-reaching-mainstream-audiences-on-dews-surveillance-abuse-wrongful-targeting-as-suzie-dawson-sets-twitter-alight/
Affidavits on the use of stealth weaponry on the general public for experimentation & control: https://everydayconcerned.net/ti-station/affidavits-letters-of-validation-and-support-legislation-efforts-attesting-to-ongoing-non-consensual-experimentation-dew-use-on-civilians/